BBC Censorship: ATF Scandal and Gun Control Edition

A major ongoing scandal in the US is the revelation that the Dept. of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms (ATF) deliberately allowed more than 2000 assault weapons to be sold to arms traffickers to sell to Mexican drug cartels. The head of the ATF has now been “re-assigned” to a keep-shtum-and-you-keep-your-pension job in another department, and the bureau chief in Arizona, where most of these guns went walkies, has been sacked.

The BBC report about this lays out the barest details, dutifully following the official White House version of what happened. To be fair, other than the odd human interest story or local atmosphere and color piece, the Beeboids in the US don’t do investigative or original reporting, and mostly rehash what they find in the liberal media they read, and where their friends work. So it’s no surprise that it’s heavy on quotes from the White House and light on facts about what the scandal is really about.

I won’t say that the BBC has been censoring news of the scandal the whole time, as they’ve done a few other news briefs about it during the past year. Naturally, those pieces also stick to the official White House version of events and fail to report what’s actually been going on.

The official version is that the ATF started this “Operation Fast and Furious” to track guns to Mexican drug cartels, in the hopes of, as the BBC reports, “tracing them to arms dealers”. Now, sting operations happen all the time in law enforcement, so this wouldn’t be unusual. Except, the White House changed their story. A BBC article from March has a slightly different “official version”, that the goal was to track the guns directly to drug cartel leaders. Which makes no sense at all. Still, first it was to catch the gun dealers, then it was to catch the drug leaders. Not that the BBC bothers to question it, as it’s official White House policy, which they must obey at all times. All they tell you is that the now ex-ATF director, Kenneth Melson, testified in Congress that “mistakes have been made”.

There’s so much that the BBC doesn’t want you to know about this, it’s not even funny. Actually, there is one funny bit: not long before this scandal first came to light, the BBC dutifully reported a success story for the operation instead. More on that in a moment.

What I’m going to do here is talk about what this scheme was really about, which is not the official version, provide links to the BBC reports, and let everyone decide for themselves if the BBC simply parroted the official version they got from the newswires and the White House and censored a huge amount of information which turns the story on its head – and points directly to the President Himself.

First, what this is all really about: a covert plan to create bloodshed which the President and His Administration could use to advance His gun control agenda. No, I’m not making this up. As we all know, the official story – repeated by the BBC – is that 70% of guns (the President and Sec. of State Clinton used to claim it was 90% – also repeated by the BBC – but what the hell, it’s only ideology, right?) used in Mexican drug violence come from the US. Never mind about how that’s not exactly true, as we’re talking about the White House version of reality, slavishly reported by the BBC.

In this piece, Steve Kingston (Hey, Kingston: how come you can pronounce “Juarez” with a flourish of Spanish accent, but can’t pronounce “Houston” the way the native whites do?) actually talks to one of the ATF agents who let the guns go walkies. Although here, it’s about how lax gun laws allow people to buy weapons easily and sell them along. See where this is going? It’s a gun control agenda, and the blurb for the video about how laws in the US are “more relaxed”. What the BBC is doing is here is actively supporting the official White House version of events, providing propaganda for the ATF scheme. In case that wasn’t enough, the BBC did a separate full piece on that agent as well. Good public value for the license fee, eh? One has to ask, though: just how much does this BBC reporter really know about it?

In any case, here’s that example of the BBC helping out with a bit of White House propaganda on the scheme. They report this minor incident, yet suppress so much important news. Agenda? What Agenda?

It’s a given that the Left would like guns to be outlawed entirely, and that their goals are to have the strictest gun control laws possible. Indeed, the Left has been pressuring the Obamessiah Administration to get tougher on guns practically from the time He took office. Yes, another Leftoid complaint about another missed opportunity to force legislation they like without having to soil their hands and deal with Republicans when they had a super-majority. The same people who now demand bi-partisanship and working together, and frown at Tea Party intransigence. But I digress.

Fast forward to March of this year, when this scandal was a mere blip on the radar in the mainstream media, and not many people were talking about this being something other than what the White House said it was. Jim Brady (Reagan Press Secretary permanently severely disabled when he took a bullet when that President was shot) and his wife, both leading activists with their own foundation, met with current Press Secretary (husband of BBC Washington correspondent Katty Kay’s friend and business partner) Jay Carney to pressure the Administration about getting a move on enforcing more gun control laws. During the meeting, the President Himself walked in, and was also asked to reassure them that strictest gun control was high on the Administration’s agenda. Apparently, it was. Only not publicly.

“I just want you to know that we are working on it,” Brady recalled the president telling them. “We have to go through a few processes, but under the radar.”

He knew. The President Himself knew about the whole thing, and no mistake. To borrow from Sandy Toksvig in a way she’d absolutely hate, He puts the other “u” in “gun control”. This is the Washington Post, ladies and gentlemen. There’s no way at least one Beeboid doesn’t know about this.

The dots begin to connect. When ex-ATF boss Melson was testifying before Congress about all this a while back, he said quite a bit more than the BBC let on. Among those “mistakes” he talked about were incidents where ATF agents were ordered to step aside and not bust gun traffickers. Which allegedly is what the whole scheme was about. And he didn’t mean ordered by him, either. Melson also said that one reason given to him – the head of the agency, remember – was that some of these people were working as informants for other agencies. Which means that this is so not just about the ATF. The FBI is involved, and the DEA is involved. All three agencies had to know in order to give such an order. This is bigger than the BBC is letting on.

Sen. Darrell Issa, on the other hand, who led the Congressional investigation into this whole thing in the first place, knows exactly what’s going on. The ever-faithful Washington Post claimed that the Administration told Issa all about it last year, and that he had no problem with it. Even the WaPo admits his aides say they didn’t give him any actual details, and Issa says they didn’t tell him any details at all. In fact, he still has questions about just how high up this goes, considering all the agencies involved and orders coming down from on high to the head of the ATF. Part of Melson’s testimony was to Issa privately, with Melson’s own attorney instead of the Government guys. Issa says there’s more to this that he knows about but can’t say until the Administration releases more documents. Melson says Attorney General Eric Holder is stalling. I wonder why? The BBC is uninterested.

Now, officially, the Obamessiah Administration says that this was a failure, an “oops”, and that neither Holder nor the President knew. That’s the story the BBC presents, without the slightest hint of anything else. That’s why Melson and the AZ guy got the boot, right? So why are some of the people busted by the ATF as part of this operation getting deals to cut their prison sentences way down? This includes – Hello! – the New Mexico mayor busted for arms dealing as reported in that BBC propaganda piece story about the ATF’s success in their mission that I mentioned above. Worse than that, why were the top three supervisors of the whole thing given promotions a couple weeks ago. Some “botched operation”. I wish I had made such successful mistakes.

Does this smell bad enough yet? Plenty of information out there, and the BBC is utterly silent, simply reporting the mainstream, President-supporting media take on it, which parrots the official line. In Melson and the AZ man, they found their scapegoat. Holder can pretend he didn’t know. And as we’ve already seen, the President knew. Lastly, here’s one of the ATF internal emails Issa released, where the Asst. Director of Field Operations, Mark Chait, says this:

Bill – can you see if these guns where purchased from the same Ffl and at one time. We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun multiple sales.

“Bill” is William Newell, the AZ guy who just got “re-assigned”. What a shock.

In the end, this Operation Fast and Furious was a scheme hatched at least near the very top, and was authorized by the President and the Attorney General, all with the goal of getting people killed so they could push their gun ban agenda. And the BBC is a willing accomplice, following that agenda, unquestioning.

4 Responses to BBC Censorship: ATF Scandal and Gun Control Edition

If a Republican was at the helm you can bet the farm the BBC would be pulling out all the stops to air a democreep attack. The left need to disarm the people, they need a vulnerable and disarmed populace reliant on the state, a supplicant client masses. This is the main plank of their warped perverted political narrative, a mass of clients who look to the state for everything is easily led and easily controlled and easily enslaved.

BBC bias? You only have to look at this scandal, how they hide it, how they protect their friends, how they lie by omission.

That is indeed a brilliant and important post David; we’re so lucky to have somebody to tell us what’s going on. We’re hearing information from a completely different angle to that provided by the bBC; they’d much prefer us to be kept in the dark until they’re ready to “explain” the story to us.

Good post with possible massive repercussions should the story get any worse nad gte made “more” public (and good comment and link Cassandra!) AS has already beenr eamrked…imagine if a Republican were involved…imagine if it was Bush!!! The BBC would be in apopleptic rage with daily screaming headlines.